The Leadership Stack Podcast

Sean: What do you do if you feel uninspired or demotivated to carry on? Sean: I list down 20 things I'm thankful for and I would thank God for them out loud. That always gets me going. How about you, Karlo? Karlo: Yeah, that's true. I agree with what you mentioned Sean because I love this principle. It's about thanks-living. It's about being grateful and counting all the blessings that you have ri...

All leaders are called to serve. And each leader has their own approach in how they lead and serve other people. Now, what type of leader are you? Listen up as Mr. CEO at 22, Sean Si shares the four types of leaders out there. Aside from this, he points out that one important aspect every leader must-have. To learn what it is, watch this episode from the Leadership Stack! --- Youtube:  https://www...

Sean: Causes for a person to be materialistic? Sean: I'd say two things. Number one is greed. Number two is lust. That's it. When you lust for things, you want to get them. You want to buy it. You want to own it. And when you have a lot of lust for things, that's greed. So I think those are two causes. Sean: The root cause would be the heart. The Book of Jeremiah Chapter 17 says, the heart is dece...

Sean: Is it important to save for an emergency fund within your monthly budget? Sean: Short answer to that is yes, and the explanation is when tough times come so that you'll not be taking a loan and be indebted with the interest, you should have an emergency fund. Sean: For sure, and you know, a lot of people who have emergency funds, if you're single, it's usually because of when you lose your j...

Sean: How can I encourage my team members to speak up? Sean: They're comfortable talking to me, but it becomes a challenge when we ask them to speak their mind in an app or platform. I guess you have to first, create a culture of safety, an environment of safety where people can speak up. That doesn't mean they're not going to be responsible about what they say, they have to be responsible about w...

Sean: OK. If someone is interested in trying out multiple investments, which one would you recommend? Karlo: What we always say to our clients as financial planners, is to always invest in an instrument that you understand, do not invest in something that you understand because there are a lot of platforms at this point in time. There are a lot of new platforms that are upcoming, and many people a...

All sports teams’ goal is to win the title. How come only one gets to win, and everyone else loses? Tune in and learn how our habits affect our goals. New Year has already passed, and it’s the time when most people try to declutter their life. Today, Mr. CEO at 22, Sean Si, personally shares how he underwent a major habit change which helped with his productivity and focus. Listen up to this episo...

Sean: What are some spending habits we should avoid to help us grow our income? I will let you go first, brother. Karlo: Well, that's a very good question, yeah? It's really about our habits, well, maybe being unaware of where your money is going, because right now because of the online platforms, it's much easier to just buy and spend right? Then out of nowhere, someone will be knocking at your d...

Sean: How do you plan all your content as a podcaster? Edwin: Real quickly. In my podcast, I planned around amazing conversations when I initially launched. And it was very intentional when I launched, I was looking to get to the Big Tech founders here in Toronto, Canada, and the US. Because it was very specific to business leaders, the business leadership genre is a very big space. But if you loo...

Sean: From your experiences meeting different leaders, what are the qualities all leaders need to have? Wow, big question. Edwin: I think I've interviewed almost 200 business leaders on my podcast called the Business Leadership Podcast and everything from super excited tech founders. But what I find is that they are visionary in the sense that they know what they want to achieve, but they are also...

Sean: What are the challenges you faced when starting up your tech company? Edwin: You know, a lot of the challenges, like any entrepreneur, is the ability to do many things. So it all depends if you're coming with a large team. But most entrepreneurs, most tech founders, they're doing many things. They're not only building out their stack or their tech stack, their MVP but they're also needed to...

Sean: What are important things to consider if you are planning to start your own tech business? Edwin: I mean, that's a great question, Pam. I mean, I would have to - that's a whole can of worms. I'd be asking you, Pam, like, what's the tech business? Do you know? Are you a tech founder or are you looking to partner with a tech founder? I guess depending on those answers, you know, understanding...

Sean: When will you get funding, like taking SEO Hacker to the next level? Sean: Oh, I've been getting a lot of those questions recently. Strangely enough, this is the fourth time that I've gotten it in a four to five-day span. Seems like a lot of people are interested in investing in SEO Hacker. I think that if I could keep it 100 percent owned by me, like what it is now, I would go for that. It'...

Sean: From Viane, how should I or how do I go all-in with what I've started? Sean: When you go all in, that means you're sure you're doubling down on what you have. That means, for example, with me, that's when I resigned from HP and finally just went full time doing SEO Hacker because I was so sure that SEO was going to be big because I was an avid user of Google before. Now I keep searching. I'm...

Sean: How can I make more enticing copies on my social media accounts? Sean: A lot of people forget social media is not about selling stuff. Social media is about connections, that's it at the get-go. And I was there when Facebook was starting. I was one of the people who hopped in. I was one of the people who ran ads for the very first time when Sheryl Sandberg finally released the ability to run...

Sean: What are the best ways to grow organically, especially when your startup is still in the early stages? Sean: The best way to actually generate a lot of words is word of mouth about your business, about your product, about your service because that's free. And that is very, very effective in the sense that when you get referred by someone to another person who might want to get your product o...

Sean: So what do you mean about being strategically unpredictable? Len: Y ou do want to be consistent in terms of the brand that you deliver? Right? But as you said, you can become so predictable that you become vulnerable. So what this comes down to, and one of the things and what I talk about in this chapter in the book is what's called the OODA loop. Len: So it's O-O-D-A, It's an acronym. O-O-D...

Sean: How do I, or all the business owners who are to actually, keep at the edge of our seats, not in paranoia, but in vigilance, in our own lives, in our own habits? What's the mindset that we have to have? Len: I think what I hear from you is, you know when I hear about where you might be becoming complacent. I don't think about you becoming complacent in terms of the business that you have - th...

Len: That idea is, what this builds into is being able to articulate your 'why.' We talked about this a little bit already, but what this gets into is understanding what your true purpose is. Len: So, you know, if someone walks into a store and steals something from a store, that person, if caught, can go to jail or they can walk away with a ticket, or they can walk away with a warning. Right. It...

Len: And so what we learned about complacency is that number one, the more successful you are, the more vulnerable you are to complacency. Right. So you look at people, you look at businesses, you look at relationships. And that was light bulb number one. I was thinking to myself, "Man, how many times do we say, how could they have fallen so far, so fast, right? How can you know, blockbuster has m...

Sean: How much is too much to pay for self-improvement? What are the factors to consider before enrolling in a high ticket course, or hiring a mentor or coach? Toni: Interesting. Okay for me, in my experience, I've never paid for a coach or a mentor. I never hired one, although I do know that there are people who will accept mentees, and then there's like a fee in exchange. But I actually allocate...

Sean: Now, how does one create the prosperity mindset when you don't have enough money or are just living off your savings? Toni: How do you create the prosperity mindset, Sean? Sean: It came from the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, that changed my perspective. So Robert Kiyosaki stated in the book, 'the world is rich. It actually is very, very rich.' If you look at the GDP of the US, for example, how ma...

Sean: Which US stocks would you recommend for beginners? Toni: Recommend. OK, but first thing before I say my answer, I just want to give this disclaimer. Don't transact or don't buy stocks just because you hear it from me, or just because you hear it from Sean. So like going by Marvin Germo's words, you know, investing in U.S. stocks even is all about conviction. So take the time to build your co...

Sean: How do we improve our leadership expertise, how we lead other people, how we influence them on a deeper level, more than work and on the higher form of sort of principle? How do we elevate their principles to be better in terms of morality, in terms of what is acceptable to society at large? Is there a way for us to hone that? Alan: Yeah. When I think about influential and powerful expertise...

Sean: I want to rewind a little bit and ask you about; what separates people who breakthrough and become experts, in spite of all the adversity, criticism, and the hardships that it takes to be one, versus someone who tried to become an expert but didn't quite make the cut? What's the separating factor between the two? Alan: Yeah, I actually spent a lot of time studying the attributes of experts,...